


Prologue To The Story Of A Starving Artist

by Gildedmuse



Category: Rent (2005), Rent - Larson
Genre: Character Study, F/M, Gen, Light Angst, One Shot, Originally Posted on LiveJournal, Pre-Canon, Prompt Fill, The Filmmaker
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-01
Updated: 2019-05-01
Packaged: 2020-02-10 18:18:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,367
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18665779
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gildedmuse/pseuds/Gildedmuse
Summary: Scene by scene, Mark finds himself closer to New York and farther from the guy he never wanted to be.





	Prologue To The Story Of A Starving Artist

**Author's Note:**

> [Posted to LJ in 2007 for the prompt "Green"]

**Prologue To The Story Of A Starving Artist**

  
His girlfriend bought it for him - the green pullover - because it lights up his eyes. Makes the usual dull hazel look almost green.  
  
After a few more drinks he explains that she - the girlfriend - says that green makes people think about sex.. Makes people want to have sex. Like music makes people want to be in love. Like he makes people want. Green sex rock star artist. It all gets blurred together, he says.  
  
Maybe it’s the music. Maybe it’s the green lights flashing over the rock star’s pull over. Maybe it’s just the vodka, but Mark really wants to have sex.  
  
It’s a heavy sort of itch, the pullover and not the needy heat Mark is trying to cool down with another drink. The rock star wouldn’t even know about that. He wears it anyway, even when the rough cotton rubs against his wet skin because under the stage lights when he’s covered in sweat she says it looks like green flames, and he believes her.  
  
\- It looks good on you, Mark promises with a slurred tongue that comes from, yes, please another shot.   
  
He messed up his chances earlier with that girl who had brilliant blue eyes and a lovable sort of sneer that ended up meaning she was about to slap him across the cheek, cold ring pressing into his skin in a sharp second. So Mark resolves himself to do what any good, rejected, horny college student would do and drink until he can’t feel his tongue as it falls back into his throat to make way for another drink.  
  
Scene One: The typical college boy in the city during Brown’s spring break. Your motives are: freedom, excitement, sex. Let’s see some energy. Let’s see some awkward, drunk determination. Let’s see heat enough to burn through the camera that turns off when you pass out in your own vomit on New York’s dirty streets.  
  
She’s with a friend. The rock star says that a few times through the night. He settled down next to him after he climbed off stage and like that all the magic for his presences disperses and the crowd walked away. Mark didn’t walk away, so the one time rock star sits next to him and just talks, and Mark just listens and drinks. When he says those lines, she’s with a friend, Mark sees flares of jealousy, or maybe that is just the pullover brining out the green in his eyes. Or maybe he’s like a Hollywood script. Easy to read and predictable.  
  
He asks, Is she beautiful?  
  
God, you have no idea.  
  
Is she cheating?  
  
No… No, no.  
  
He looks upset, so Mark uses his father’s card to buy them some more drinks. When he waves it around he feels the need to explain that he isn’t Jacob, like the card says, he isn’t a banker. He’s Mark, the filmmaker. The failed flirt. The college boy who hates his school. The want to be but can’t break out bohemian living off his parents. The boy who keeps a copy of James Joyce under his pillow.  
  
The only one who stuck around to see this rock star’s fading glory once the amps turned off, and Mark has a feeling that is all that matters tonight and the rest of him could be none existent until morning.  
  
Does he know that one movie? Spinal Tap?  
  
Yes.  
  
Has he ever shot like, a porno or something?  
  
God, no.  
  
Mark is told he looks like Speilburgh but not as, well, ugly. In return, Mark says he looks sort of like Billy Idol, but only because he’s so drunk everyone sort of looks like Billy Idol. They laugh and drink away his father’s hard stolen money, and it tastes wonderful.  
  
Scene Two: The two strangers settling into a comfortable friendship formed entirely on desperation and heavy drinking. Let’s see snorts of laughter into the beer. Let’s see glazed over eyes and half smiles. Let’s see a sort of self-admiration for doing something that your mother would have a heart attack if she knew about.  
  
He isn’t from the city, the rock star already knows that but he asks anyway. Mark tells this stranger how he didn’t go home because he didn’t want to see his girlfriend, sort of girlfriend, nothing really, which is more than he’s told his friends back at Brown.  
  
He never wanted to be with Liz, really. He wanted Amy, the head of the drama club and a senior would never once looked at him. He didn’t want a summer job at his father’s bank. He wanted to waste it in the park with a cheap camcorder and friends holding ratty sheets of notebook paper with lines and corrections scribbled on the corners around math notes. He never wanted to go to Brown, he wanted to go to the Sundance festival and show that a kid with a video camera can change the whole fucking world.  
  
Mark had so many plans not to be just another boy, college student, son, citizen, friend, person, boyfriend, human being. He wanted to be Mark. Apart.  
  
He spills all of that out and some of the vodka that he can’t swallow down. He lets this stranger know more about him than his roommate. It doesn’t feel as good as some people want you to believe it does to get it all out in the open. It makes him feel crushed and defeated and so far behind.  
  
\- I know a girl like that. When the rock star pulls his jacket on it covers up the pullover but not his energy. Too late for that. I have more drinks at home, the rock star explains so that Mark can’t really say no and wouldn’t because going home with a rock star sounds better than passing out in a back alley and at least getting his guts torn out and strewn around a room is unusual. That’s what Mark wants.  
  
His name is Roger and he lives on a shoddy apartment on Avenue B, which Mark knows nothing about. He knows it’s dirty and cold and he forces himself to appreciate its strange beauty because at least it’s better than his dorm room back at Brown. Compared to the cubical they stick them in, this is wide open and free. The dirt is a fucking blessing, really, compared to the white walls like an insane asylum and classes like straight jackets that Mark has gotten use to.  
  
He doesn’t want to be use to them, and so even though the loft is a mess Mark says he loves it because, more than anything, he wants to love it and be apart of this artist starvation. Mark apart.  
  
His girlfriend has wild brown hair with parts that look ruined by bleach and colored in green and blue. She takes Roger’s hand and pulls off the leather jacket and says that it’s fine for Mark to sleep on the couch. 

He doesn’t so much sleep as pass out. The sounds of rock stars green sex from the next room lull him off.  
  
Scene three: A lonely boy follows home a rock star to who knows where because he was born into a cookie cut house to a picture perfect family to a life of expectations where Kubrick and Joyce were all that was between him and the massive manufactured suburbanized Orwell Utopia. And maybe that sounds overdramatic, but let’s see a kid who is desperate enough to break free from all that that you would sleep on some stranger’s couch in the city. Let’s see passion enough that you can’t stop thinking even when the alcohol should be drowning out his brain. Let’s see realization click into place that you don’t want to just follow along with the expectations and hope it works out anymore.  
  
\- I don’t think I really want to leave, Mark explains the next morning when Roger finally emerges from the bedroom looking like he’s just gotten off the stage again, that same faded presences clinging to him still. And the rock star just shrugs in acceptance that another artists will now be sleeping on his couch.


End file.
